~ That Hemingway Moment ~

​The little café squatted in the shadow of the great concrete monolith of the 1960’s hotel behind it. Perched on the corner of the street at the very edge of the quiet end of the resort, the café was never busy at night. Tonight was no exception. Outside on the terrace there were only four customers. Dan and his wife, Ann, sat at one table and two Spanish girls at another. A waiter hovered over the girls’ table, while the café owners – the parents of the waiter, Dan assumed – sat inside watching television.

Dan guessed the girls were in their late teens, maybe even in their early twenties. They looked very similar, almost identical, with the same long black hair, large almond eyes and sharp noses. Sisters, perhaps, he thought. A pair of budding Spanish beauties. The downside, though, was that they both had the same annoying giggle. And for the last half-hour their giggling had been incessant as they watched the increasingly bizarre antics of the waiter.

Dan and Ann were also watching those antics. Dan reckoned the waiter was about twenty-five, a few years younger than he was. Wearing a skin-tight tee-shirt and equally tight trousers to show off his lithe body, the young Spaniard strutted in front of the giggling girls. At one point, he became a flamenco dancer, straightening his back, clapping his hands in the air and banging his heels on the ground. At another, he pretended to be a matador, brandishing his waiter’s cloth as if it were a bullfighter’s cape. El fucking toro! Dan had muttered to himself when the imaginary bull passed under the pretend cape.

And now the waiter had transformed into a plate spinner. Instead of using a plate, however, he was spinning his silver tray on his index finger. Dan figured it was a trick that must have taken the Spaniard years to perfect. He secretly wished that the tray would suddenly veer away and crash into the girls’ drinks. But it didn’t. And the girls were in rapture, clapping and giggling louder than before.

Dan looked at Ann. A week spent in the sun had turned her into a bronzed beauty. Her eyes sparkled in the half-light of the café and two rows of pure white teeth gleamed in her smiling face. But she wasn’t smiling at him. She, too, seemed to be mesmerised by the floor show, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by the waiter.

Dan sighed. It was as if he knew what was about to transpire. He wondered what was worse: putting up with the popinjay’s performance here or enduring another night of so-called entertainment back at the hotel with those endless renditions of Y Viva España. After a week of the latter, they had needed to get away from the hotel for a few hours. So they had paid the Entertainment Manager to organise a babysitter for their two very young children, a sum of money they could ill-afford.

After his tray-spinning feat, the waiter bowed to his audience and went inside the café, where he could be heard talking to his parents. He reappeared a few moments later carrying a wineskin. Dan hadn’t seen a wineskin before. He thought it looked like a bagpipe without a chanter. It was made of leather and had a stopper at its pointed end.

With a great flourish, the waiter pulled out the stopper with one hand and with the other raised the wineskin high above him. Instantly, a stream of dark liquid poured from the wineskin and flowed in a perfect arc straight into his open mouth. Then, with another flourish, he lowered the wineskin and replaced the stopper. Not a drop of liquid had been spilled.

Needless to say, the two doe-eyed girls were ecstatic and clapped wildly in appreciation of this latest spectacle. Having stepped out to the terrace to witness their son’s performance, the waiter’s parents were also clapping. Dan was dismayed to see that Ann had joined in the applause. He was even more dismayed when the waiter stepped towards him, offering him the wineskin.

“And now it is your turn, señor,” said the latter with a smug grin across his face.

“Aye, go on, Dan,” Ann nudged him. “Go on. It’ll be a guid laugh.”

Dan knew the score. The señoritas were already besotted with the waiter. They were his conquests. But now he was looking for a new conquest. The pretty señora was in his sights. And what better way to capture the señora’s heart than to humiliate her husband?

Dan stood up. He was wearing a white seersucker shirt, which was very light, just perfect for the humid Costa Blanca nights, and which he did not want ruined by this silly caper. So he unbuttoned the shirt, took it off and handed it to Ann. He heard little gasps escaping from the girls. Open-mouthed, they were now watching him rather than the waiter. What they were seeing was a chest matted with thick jet-black curls that matched Dan’s beard and long hair; a torso toned from many years of manual work; and a body that wasn’t just bronzed after seven days spent on the beach, but had turned a deep shade of mahogany.

The truth was that Dan looked more Spanish than the locals, which probably wasn’t surprising if he believed what his Irish mother had frequently told him. She claimed to be one of the Black Irish people, descendants of Spanish immigrants to Ireland in the sixteenth century. She also said that, through her line, more pure Spanish blood ran in his veins than in the veins of most Spaniards, whose blood had been diluted after centuries of intermingling with other races.

Whether or not his mother’s claims were true, for tonight Dan was the proud son of a Black Irishwoman. He stood erect and narrowed his dark eyes. He was a stranger in a foreign land. He was Lord Byron swimming across the Hellespont. He was Hemingway out-machoing the macho men of Pamplona.

Probably foreseeing that he would be challenged by the waiter, Dan had observed his adversary carefully. He could see that a steady hand and concentration were required. And confidence. He took hold of the proffered wineskin, pulled out the stopper and lifted the bag above his head. A small torrent of liquid rushed from the wineskin and flowed in another perfect trajectory into his mouth. The wine, warm and sour, hit the back of his throat and plummeted into his stomach. Then in a swift, deft move he brought the wineskin down and replaced the stopper. Again, not a drop of wine was spilled.

He tossed the wineskin back to the clearly crestfallen waiter, who caught it awkwardly.

​“Prick!” Dan hissed at him.

Without looking away from the waiter, he fished in a trouser pocket, brought out a couple of peseta notes and threw them on the table at his side. Then he turned to Ann. While she handed him his shirt, he picked up her handbag from the table, saying, “C’moan, hen. We’ve a pair o’ bairns tae look efter.”